Tuesday 30 July 2013

Discontinuing powerpc builds of Ubuntu desktop?

Hi folks,

So the Ubuntu desktop image has not been building on powerpc for roughly a
month at this point, due to build failures in particular subcomponents of
the unity stack. However, even before the images themselves started to be
unbuildable, it was my understanding that the images were in practice
unusable on powerpc due to lack of suitable hardware-accelerated drivers -
since we no longer have a 2d fallback for Unity, and the images therefore
have an unusably slow UI.

So it's my belief that the audience for Ubuntu desktop on powerpc is
currently zero, extending back at least to the 13.04 release, and that this
is not going to change. But before dropping the images, we want to check
this assumption with the community. Does anyone know if there's a reason to
care about Ubuntu powerpc images for 13.10?

To be clear, this only affects the Ubuntu desktop images; Ubuntu server,
Lubuntu, etc. will continue to be built for powerpc as they are currently.

If no one says anything to the contrary, I'll adjust the build scripts at
the end of the week to drop Ubuntu powerpc.

Cheers,
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org